Peaking is a difficult art. You're walking a fine line, trying to run your max mileage and hardest workouts without overdoing it, getting sick, or causing injury. My four previous weeks were peak weeks: I ran every day but one, averaging 59mi and 6800' of climbing including three hard workouts per week. It felt great.

This past week was much harder. I didn't want to taper for two full weeks, nor did I want to run as hard as I had during my peak, so I had to do something in between. I didn't cut back enough to make me feel fresh and ready to race, but I did cut back on both mileage and intensity and was surprised to find that toward the end of the week I was feeling more tired than I had during my peak training weeks. I think this is OK--my body is telling me it's time to rest just when I should be resting according to my race schedule--but it's not a great feeling mentally.

Looking Ahead: The Patch Sprint is next Saturday, so this is the time to taper. Assuming I feel good I'll run one more strength workout on the track on Tuesday, cutting the fast miles to 4 rather than the usual 6, and I'll mix a few hard pickups into my Thursday run, but otherwise I'll be running easy and short. More importantly I'll try to eat well (healthy foods, not too much, mostly carbs from Wednesday on) and get plenty of sleep.